Play Ball!

There have been a lot of changes in baseball. Old gloves are barely recognizable next to new ones. With video, radar guns and computer driven statistical analysis the game of today is far more scientific than in the past. Babe Ruth's training regimen of hot dogs, beer and women is quite different from today's players.

But fundamentally the game has remained the same. The pitcher pitches. The batter swings. There are three strikes, four balls and four bases each ninety feet apart. You can foul the ball off as many times as you want. The excitement that I feel when my team has a runner on third with two outs in the bottom of the ninth is the same excitement that was felt by fans 100 years ago. They prayed for any kind of hit in the same way that I pray, just as the opposing fans pray for an out of any kind.

There's comfort in the knowledge that so many other people have felt the same things that I do. Not only have they felt the same thing as me but they've done the same things as well. Many people have thrown their hats off in disgust one moment and then leapt out of their seats with joy the next.

It's not just with baseball that I feel this way.

It amazes me that the C chord I bang out on a guitar is the same C chord that Hank Williams played. I sit down at my drawing board with my pen and ink knowing that Charles Schulz did the same thing. Henry David Thoreau stacked wood for the winter and so do I.

I know I can't do as much with my C chord as Hank Williams, nor is it likely that I'll create something on par with Peanuts, and I'm sure Thoreau had a neater woodpile.

But it's nice that I can still take part.